Doctors concluded that she had had a stroke but were perplexed as to why, the paper said. Then they found a "love bite" on her neck near a major artery, and discovered a clot in the artery beneath the hickey — a small vertical bruise.

"Because it was a love bite there would be a lot of suction," said Dr. Wu, who attended to the woman over a year ago at the Middlemore Hospital in Auckland, according to the paper. "Because of the physical trauma it had made a bit of bruising inside the vessel."

He added the clot traveled to the woman's heart and caused the stroke.

"We looked at the medical literature and that example of having a love bite causing something like that hasn't been described before," Dr Wu said.

The Maori woman was treated with an anticoagulant and the clot disappeared within a week, doctors said.